Popular quotes about Innocence! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
John AdamsSlave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.
Albert CamusI feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.
Quentin S. CrispPeople who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
James A. BaldwinWhen I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.
Agnes MartinOver the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.
Ang LeeMany may very well continue to ask why more value is placed on technicalities of a law than on a man's flesh and blood life, especially when there is any amount of "doubt" at all regarding his guilt or innocence.
AberjhaniI don't care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It's not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It's a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.
Werner HerzogGreat things demand that we either remain silent about them or speak in a great manner: in a great manner, that is-cynically and with innocence.
Friedrich NietzscheThe bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...
Anton ChekhovThe human body represents to me the same universal innocence, timelessness and purity of all seed pods, suggesting the mother as well as the child, the parental as well as the descendant, conceived according to nature's longings.
Ruth BernhardYou still owe me a million dollars." I'd presented him with a bill for proving his innocence and getting him freed from prison. He had yet to pay. Couldn't imagine why. "Yeah, I was hoping we could work that out." "The interest alone is going to kill you." "What do you charge?" "Three hundred eighty-seven percent." "Is that ethical?" "It's as ethical as my dating the son of Satan.
Darynda JonesEven in the lust of knowledge I feel only my will's delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because my procreative will is in it.
Friedrich NietzscheNor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused: Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
John MiltonI suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
George WillThere is scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the exact - I will ever say pedantic - observance of the regular forms by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.
Winston ChurchillNo matter what happens, always Keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.
Federico FelliniI think a lot of people also have kids to reclaim thั innocence and experience it over again. I think it's about staying curious and not losing the sense of wonder.
Mamie GummerA feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it.
Samuel RichardsonCyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other...
Donna J. HarawayDeath during adolescence feels unfair. We're young. We're invincible. Death is supposed to come with old age. When death breaks into our lives and steals our innocence, its finality leaves us unnaturally older. There are too many elderly young people.
Sara ShandlerI would not say that old men grow wise, for men never grow wise; and many old men retain a very attractive childishness and cheerful innocence. Elderly people are often much more romantic than younger people, and sometimes even more adventurous, having begun to realize how many things they do not know.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIt wasn't the intention to do something important, or to even relate about social issues. The ground is so fertile in the justice world, dealing with the death penalty and the Innocence Project, for characters that have a moral ambiguity, which we were both attracted to. It's the idea that everybody has their reasons. Whatever their actions are, whether you agree with them or not, you can understand why they're feeling that way, in terms of racism or even the death penalty.
Richard LaGraveneseI am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions and ignorance of the value of public discussions. I have no doubt that all their other measures will be good and wise. It is really an assembly of demigods.
Thomas JeffersonThere's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.
Cecelia AhernI would love to be fooled. The innocence of child for the first time, seeing something and being in wonder is something that I long for because I'm tainted.
Criss AngelAlthough a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
Seneca the YoungerIt would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
Henry David Thoreau[On the Adam and Eve story:] They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
Sarah Moore GrimkeI know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.
Dylan ThomasThe writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent.
Juan GoytisoloI don't judge the character at all. It's a bit like being someone's defense lawyer - you have to believe in their innocence in order to defend them.
Rachel WeiszIf you are ready to be intimate, you will encourage the other person also to be intimate. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.
RajneeshThe fruition of what is unlawful must be followed by remorse. The core sticks in the throat after the apple is eaten, and the sated appetite loathes the interdicted pleasure for which innocence was bartered.
Jane PorterRosemary bubbled with delight at the trunks. Her naivete responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware that it was all a selection of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world's bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at.
F. Scott FitzgeraldYou can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.
Lionel ShriverOne part of love is innocence One part of love is guilt One part the milk that in a sense Is soured as soon as spilt One part of love is sentiment One part of love is lust One part is the presentiment Of our return to dust
Clive BarkerI think what you have inside reflects very much in your face, in your expression. If you can find a kind of equilibrium in life, you never really get old, because you have that kind of ingenuity and innocence inside that gives you that brightness and that glint in your eye that generally, getting older, you lose.
Sophia Loren